Tuesday April 8, 2014 year: 134 No. 51
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Cheer coach named after former fired
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Reeves leads by example
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MADISON CURTIS / Design editor
KATHLEEN MARTINI Oller reporter martini.35@osu.edu Many Ohio State students have come to expect some amount of decay when they move into an off-campus house, so when Jared Malvic and his friends moved into a house on 12th Avenue last year, they weren’t surprised to find it needed some maintenance. But when the initial mold in the air conditioning units and dirt on the floor turned into service requests that needed to be placed multiple times to be filled, Malvic said he started to get annoyed. “My window’s broken,” said Malvic, a fourth-year in materials science and engineering. “It’s been like that a while, and it hasn’t been fixed.” Then the housemates found a stranger living in a room in their basement, unbeknownst to them, in September. Especially after that, they didn’t have many good things to say about their rental company, NorthSteppe Realty, said MJ Dorony, a fourth-year in journalism who lives in the house. “We’re not their biggest fans, no,” Dorony said.
Lantern file photo
Some OSU fraternities plan to spend millions of dollars on renovations to meet the new standards in order to house second-year students for the on-campus living requirement set to go into effect Fall Semester 2016.
Some Ohio State fraternities plan to spend millions of dollars making home improvements, like installing sprinkler systems, leading up to the on-campus living requirement set to go into effect Fall Semester 2016. Greek houses must meet a set of new standards, the Greek Housing Standard, in order to house second-year students, and the list includes rules banning alcohol in common areas, requiring there to be one desk per bedroom or dayroom and maintaining a live-in adviser. Not every chapter house will need to make changes to meet the standards and the program
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Housing violations at NorthSteppe off-campus housing since Jan. 23, 2013
Fraternities weigh costs of on-campus living requirement
ISABELLA GIANNETTO Lantern reporter giannetto.5@osu.edu
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Lost and found hidden at OSU
43 complaints filed about NorthSteppe since Jan 2013
ERIC SEGER Sports editor seger.25@osu.edu The Ohio State spirit squad has a new head coach — and he’s a former Buckeye. More than four months after former head cheerleading coach Lenee Buchman — who had been in the position since July 2009 — was terminated “for cause” following a sexual harassment investigation involving her assistant coaches and athletes, OSU announced Ben Schreiber as the squad’s new head coach in a press release Monday. Schreiber, who cheered at OSU from 2004-07, replaces interim coach Steve Chorba, who took over for Buchman Nov. 25, the day she was fired. “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to return to my alma mater and be at the helm of the spirit program, specifically as the head cheerleading coach,” Schreiber said in a released statement. “I look forward to working with each student-athlete and helping them achieve their goals and dreams as I am blessed to live out my own.” Schreiber spent the past five years as the head cheerleading coach and fitness coordinator at the University of Delaware. Schreiber led the Blue Hens to the 2014 UCA Division I Large Coed National Championship, while the team finished as national runners-up from 2010-13, according to the release. He said he looks to establish that kind of success at OSU. “My desire is to continue to build on the traditions of the program and develop new, cutting-edge concepts to help distinguish this program from others,” Schreiber said. Schreiber is set to earn a base salary of $43,000, OSU spokesman Adam Widman told The Lantern in an email. Chorba earned $37,000 as interim head coach,
Music festival to hit C-Bus
is voluntary, so every house might not participate, Student Life spokesman Dave Isaacs said in an email. “Right now we are setting up committees that will look at the best way to implement each of the standards,” Isaacs said. “Those committees will have students, alumni, faculty and staff as members and will be important as we move forward, especially as we look at the best way the university can support the process.” Isaacs said OSU has 65 sorority and fraternity chapters with a total of about 4,500 members. The chapters that decide to comply will be able to house second-year students after Fall Semester 2016 and participate in the Second-Year Transformational Experience Program.
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NorthSteppe, which owns about 100 different dwellings in the OSU campus area, has accrued more than 220 housing violations since 2008, including more than 40 since January 2013 and at least five in 2014, according to a City of Columbus Code Enforcement log. Among those violations are cockroach infestations and excessive trash buildup. “Persons living here are dealing with rats,” reads one entry. “Persons have had to kill rats here and the landlord is not doing anything about it.” Other entries show no working smoke detectors in units, structural disrepair and graffiti on the outsides of occupied buildings. One resident in 2012 reported that a fire escape was unattached from the building, an owl was destroying the roof, there was a bug infestation and mold was growing on the ceiling — all in one house. Residents of the houses, passers-by who notice a problem or Community Crime Patrol have reported violations, according to the log. Any open orders made against a NorthSteppe property are investigated by Columbus Code Enforcement, but there have not been investigations into the company itself, said Dana Rose, Columbus Code Enforcement administrator.
“We’re going to be looking at all landlords with multiple properties in the next few months,” Rose said Feb. 24. “But we haven’t gotten to making a specific list yet.” The City of Columbus Code Enforcement Division aims to improve quality of life in Columbus areas by implementing and enforcing various city codes, including housing, health and safety codes, according to its website. NorthSteppe has made some changes to ensure the quality of its houses since a stranger was found to be living at the house on 12th Avenue, said Mike Stickney, broker of NorthSteppe Realty, in an email Jan. 13. “We have made policy changes,” Stickney said. “We are inspecting our properties on a quarterly basis for safety, security and cleanliness issues.” Stickney did not respond to emails requesting comment about housing violations. Slightly less than 40 percent of respondents to an OSU Undergraduate Student Government survey about off-campus landlords rated NorthSteppe a 3 out of 5, where 5 represented the best score. Roughly 25 percent of respondents gave NorthSteppe a 1, and
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Decision to remain at OSU tough for some REGINA BONFIGLIO Lantern reporter bonfiglio.20@osu.edu Though some Ohio State officials insist the university’s 93 percent freshmen retention rate shows OSU is doing something right, the decision of whether to return wasn’t easy for some students. Karli Shill is one such student. She transferred to OSU from Chapman University in California for Spring Semester 2013, but wasn’t happy with her decision. “I really was just a body amongst 60,000 others,” said Shill decided to transfer back to Chapman for Fall Semester 2013 and is now a third-year in sociology there. Shill, whose parents live in the Columbus area, said after paying out-of-state tuition during her first year of college at Chapman, her parents had faced financial difficulties. “I realized that in order to make it easier on my family, I should transfer to Ohio State because I would receive in-state tuition and have to take out much fewer student loans,” she said. But although Shill attempted to join student organizations, she said her position as a transfer student made it hard to find her niche. “I never really felt like I found my place on the campus,” she said. Shill’s situation might be familiar to those who make up the 7 percent of students that leave OSU, Provost and Executive Vice President Joseph Steinmetz said. “It’s not the case that they’re students that drop out of college. A fair majority of that 7 percent go on and transfer to other schools,” he said in an interview with The Lantern April 1. “I think that’s a big win (that of) 7 percent that don’t stay, they’re at least continuing on their education somewhere.” And although some students end up leaving OSU, the university is working to boost its firstyear retention rate from 93 percent to 95 percent in upcoming years. In order to reach this goal, Dolan Evanovich, the vice president for strategic enrollment planning,
College freshmen retention rates Yale 99%
OSU 93% National average 66%
source: U.S. News and World Report LEE MCCLORY / Lantern designer said OSU plans to focus on personalizing students’ experiences and working harder to get them connected on campus. “For each student it’s different,” he said, “(but) supporting them in their transition, helping them have a good first semester, getting them connected and involved, that really is our strategy.” And unlike Shill, some students who had contemplated transferring out of OSU found reasons to stay. Joanna Twist, a second-year in biochemistry from West Virginia, said she thought about transferring her first year because of a tough workload as an engineering major in the Fundamentals of Engineering Honors program. “It was extremely difficult and I would be in the computer lab as early as 5 a.m. and wouldn’t get back to my dorm from studying until midnight,” Twist said. “I had never been so stressed in my life and I really wanted to go back home where I could de-stress and be reunited with all of my friends.”
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